Falsehoods of the Allied Nations’ Victorious Views of History,
as Seen by a British Journalist
byHenry Scott Stokes, former Tokyo Bureau Chief of The New York Times(Summary by Tadashi Hama, Ph.D)
Mr. Henry Scott Stokes gives his candid observations on his vibrant life in Japan as the longest
serving gaijin kisha, foreign correspondent, in Japan and attacks historical myths cited as facts
and evidence of Japan’s past aggression. As one who has lived in Japan for over 50 years, Mr.
Stokes has made acquaintances with the elite of Japanese society, including famed novelist andactivist Yukio Mishima, the subject of Mr. Stokes’ biographic, The Life and Death of Yukio
Mishima. Mr. Stokes was the only foreign correspondent who had ready access to Mishima, whospoke freely on matters important to Japan including her lost sense of “Japanese essence” and“Japanese uniqueness”. Underlying this loss is the total enthrallment of the Japanese people by apost-war view of history and an utterly alien world view fabricated and forced upon them by theWest.
Mr. Stokes carefully lays out the facts concerning historical controversies such as the Japanese
war-time “comfort women” and the so-called Nanking Massacre. That these controversies persist
are due to several factors. While one can easily access the endless flood of politically motivatedhate-speech emanating from China and Korea, accurate information concerning these and othercontroversies is nonexistent outside of Japan. While foreigners are in part responsible formisinformation and outright lying, a large share of the responsibly rests with the Japanese people
themselves. Professional, self-hating Japanese activists have been at the fore front of a campaign
to keep the Japanese and the rest of the world from seeing the facts as they are. In the case of thewar-time “comfort women,” Mr. Stokes points out that US military forces knew of the Japanese“comfort women” and called them in their report “prostitutes” and “camp followers”. The
situation was not at all uncommon in other militaries, including the US military, during war.
Unfortunately, excessive moralizing against others without self-assessment is usually the caseconcerning such topics as prostitution; people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
In the case of the so-called Nanking Massacre, Mr. Stokes points out the desire of the pre-war
propaganda arm of the Kuomintang government to discredit Japan’s efforts in liberating Asia
from the West, without which, the Kuomintang, thoroughly corrupt and unpopular, could notsurvive. At the time of the so-called Nanking Massacre, neither Mao Tsu-tung nor Chiang KaiShek mentioned a “Nanking Massacre,” despite ample opportunity to announce such an evil
“atrocity” to the rest of the world. Mr. Stokes gives his perspective on what a journalist would
see when entering an urban area of combat when he reported from Kwangju during the uprisingthere in May 1980. A pervasive information vacuum—who was killing whom—is likely whatjournalists who reported from Nanking experienced.
To the uninitiated, history is indeed full of surprises. Mr. Stokes is not dogmatic such that hecannot change his mind based on the evidence. For example, while initially impressed with therespect and dignity of North Korean officials, his unscheduled viewing of a truckload of politicalprisoners quickly altered his generous estimation of North Korea. While Kim Dae-jung is reveredeverywhere as a spokesman for Korean “democracy,” Mr. Stokes points out his reptilian nature,
pandering as circumstances dictated. Mr. Stokes has much to say from his perspective as a longserving gaijin kasha.